Two new projects for the Digital Health Design Living Lab
The Digital Health Design Living Lab (DHD LL) is a place where experts from different fields exchange ideas in order to develop innovative, customized products, processes and concepts for the future of digital health care and to actively shape it with the involvement of the public. The projects are funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. With this funding, the SNSF aims to specifically strengthen application-oriented research projects on health and well-being at universities of applied sciences and universities of teacher education.
1 June 2024 – 30 May 2027
Nowadays, more and more digital technologies are used in physical therapy and rehabilitation, such as robotic rehabilitation, health apps and wearables, virtual reality for stroke rehabilitation, or tele physiotherapy. This development requires a new responsibility for physical therapists, that goes beyond the mere application of technologies – namely, to critically examine ethical aspects of digital technologies.
To further develop the competences of physiotherapists in the use of digital health technologies, the training of the skills required must keep pace with the development in the field. The knowledge and ethical case vignettes acquired in this project will allow to improve this training in educational programs. In specific, this project aims to 1) scope ethical dimensions that need to be considered by physiotherapists when using digital technologies in their practice and to identify ethical conflicts that arise within these ethical dimensions, 2) identify physiotherapists’ views on ethical dimensions of digital technology use and to identify their needs related to knowledge and competences, 3) develop case vignettes ethically relevant for physiotherapy practice, and 4) translate case vignettes into an effective toolkit for education to reflect on ethical questions.
1 September 2024 – 30 August 2027
Artificial intelligence (AI) is expected to have a significant impact on healthcare. The field of emergency medicine (EM) has been at the forefront of discussions on the application of AI in healthcare, with the promise to increase the speed and accuracy of clinical decisions, to better handle patients’ triage, and to detect and predict high-risk conditions and life-threatening pathologies.
In particular, the question of how much AI autonomy is appropriate in such a setting and how this affects psychological variables will be empirically addressed via these studies. Our research thus provides important insights for the basic research of human-AI interaction and how psychological needs such as human autonomy and user trust influence the use of AI. Furthermore, our research provides practical implications for future research and development of such tools by demonstrating how much AI support/autonomy is desirable when regarding the basic needs and wellbeing of the users.
